Abstract

We investigate numerically the interplay between dispersion and nonlinearity
for optimizing the performance of an all-optical 2R regenerator based on self-phase
modulation and spectral filtering at 40 Gb/s. By considering the extent of
improvement in the ${\rm
Q}$ factor (related to level of noise reduction), we show
that the ratio of accumulated dispersion to the maximum nonlinear phase shift
can be used to predict the performance of regenerators making use of fibers
with very different lengths, dispersions, and nonlinear parameters. Our results
show that fiber dispersion plays an important role and needs to be properly
optimized. In general, fibers with larger dispersion perform better but require
higher input powers. We also study the impact of fluctuations in dispersion
from their nominal value and show that their impact is much less severe when
fiber dispersion is relatively small.